Re: Please don't refer to Emacs as "open source"

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> You're missing the point, which is that of all human beings not
> currently in the free software movement, the most likely-to-join group
> is probably the open source community.

If the free software movement masks itself as the open source community,
that group has nowhere to go.

> Sure, some are openly anti-free-software-movement, but most are not.
> By injecting the free software movement into that community, the goals
> and programs of the movement get wider, more personal, and IMO more
> persuasive dissemination.

But there is no point for the free software movement to inject the open
source movement into the open source community.

Open source is the attempt to turn free software into good business
sense.  But our economy is built around ways for restraining cooperation
and selling limited access to it.  The vast majority of open source
endeavours end up as failures according to their own metrics.  Creating
free software is rarely good business sense, harvesting it may be.  The
GPL creates a niche where creating/extending a bit of free software in
return for harvesting a lot may make business sense.  Because business
will only cooperate at gunpoint.  Gunpoint makes for limited ecosystems,
but it does not make anybody believe in any values.  But business only
believes in shareholder value, anyway.

Since the economy is built around taxing any flow of cooperation and
knowledge, free software, which is designed to be impervious to damming,
is bound to fail as a business model component in a lot of settings.

The Open Source movement counts this as a deficiency of the software,
the Free Software movement counts this as a deficiency of the system.

Selling the motives behind Free Software off as something different may
lead to short-lived enthusiasm but will ultimately end in
disappointment and disillusionment.

The GPL is the consequence of such disillusionment.  There is no point
in restarting the cycle.

> If what you mean is, "Give me software freedom, or give me death!",

"or I will create it myself." is the actual credo of the free software
movement.  "or something else." that of the open source movement since
they focus on secondary concerns.

> OK, but the basic fact of life in any group larger than one is that
> there are many rights, they conflict, and not everybody is going to
> agree with that unidimensional philosophy as a solution.

That's not a problem of the philosophy.  If your cake is frequently too
salty, do you try to fix this by diluting the salt in the cupboard with
sugar in order to be able to continue using the same recipe?

> Please stop merely repeating the FSF propaganda about open source, and
> deal with the phenomenon as it is: diverse.  You cannot win the hearts
> of my friends otherwise.

Why win their hearts with false pretense?  One won't be able to keep
them that way.

-- 
David Kastrup